The 19 year-old Korean ice-skater KIM Yuna just won the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics.

I spent 5 weeks in South-Korea this winter, and I witnessed how popular and “bankable” KIM Yuna is in her homeland : she’s just everywhere ! Selling everything, all kinds of products ! Her image is worth a lot of money, and is used to sell many things, in a typical Korean way of using national stars in countless marketing campaigns. Her name, along with footballer’s PARK Ji-seung and swimmer PARK Taehwan – to just name the most famous ones – seems to be known and loved (revered ?) by almost every Korean person… (from what I observed). Many Korean young people asked me if I knew these athletes when I was there ! I told them that they are not as famous in Europe as Zidane is in Japan and South-Korea…. but maybe KIM Yuna’s Olympic gold medal will change that …

International athletes like KIM Yuna or PARK Taehwan are known by almost every Korean person, and so it is not surprising to find out that both of them are also ambassadors for South Korea’s international image-making campaign “Dynamic Korea” (basically every internationally-known Korean star seems to be asked to become ambassador for their country – in order to expand its soft-power, like through the Hallyu ?).

What do you think about the (over ?)-use of Nation stars’ image in marketing campaign in South-Korea ?

And, by extension, what do you think of how the Korean entertainment and sport industries promote their stars/champions like marketing products ?